


Vernal Equinox

by chinquix, Ellimac, FatalCookies



Series: Sun and Ash [3]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 09:48:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6233848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chinquix/pseuds/chinquix, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellimac/pseuds/Ellimac, https://archiveofourown.org/users/FatalCookies/pseuds/FatalCookies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The spring celebration draws near in the little town outside which Rose has made her home. Busy a time though it is, the equinox heralds a day when day and night share equal hours—and Rose intends to share the celebration as best she can, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vernal Equinox

**Author's Note:**

> This song was inspired by and written almost entirely while listening to "[Alban Eiler](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eU-U3GWBIQ)." For an idea of the music being played at the end, give a listen!

 

Much as she’s grown to love the seasons each in full and for each of their gifts, it would be nothing short of a lie, but for Rose to confess that the vernal equinox was her favorite of the seasonal celebrations. Call it old biases, call it her singing clay core and the humming song of her blooming brethren—for it was those things, too, and more.

It was the renewed business. It was the hands in the soil, the loving touches of hands upon green, the scent on the air and the release of excited children into longer and longer days. It was the perfect divide of the day into darkness, which felt to her a happy sharing—which feels maybe especially happy, now. Given the recent friends she has made under stars... yes. Such a sharing feels, to her, highly appropriate. 

The celebration takes weeks to prepare, from the stockpiling of wood for the fires to the weaving and sewing of ribbons for the early maypoles, all the way to the musicians tuning their instruments time and time again in the new high humidity. There is hardly a day that passes when Rose is not busy inside the town itself, tending to this, that, or the other thing, lending magic, advising on recipes, helping lift, helping sew, reaching high, tending children...

(If she were to be very honest, it is another reason to love the celebration as much as she does, for how much she feels she _belongs_  among the warmth and kindness of the town and its people.)

...and the thing of it is, she is happy to do it, and does not quite realize how much of her time it takes up, until the evening she arrives back at her home outside the hedge, and finds Pearl waiting there, hands neatly folded, eyes intent on her.

Rose takes a few hurried steps, nearly a skip, to get there sooner. “Hello,” she says, the moment she is within earshot—well, earshot, perhaps, of an ordinary human—and smiles. “I hope you’ve not been waiting long—”

“No, not at all,” Pearl says, and then hesitates. “Well... that is—it hasn’t been _so_ long. An hour at most, really, and it’s not as though I had other plans for the evening—”

But Rose is already reaching for Pearl, clucking gently with a soft hiss of her tongue between her teeth. She touches her arm, turns her, and gently ushers her into her home with a gentle palm flat upon the small of her back.

Once inside, Rose lights her lamp. It is late already and she suspects there will be no use in lighting a fire in her hearth, this evening. Certainly, with the changing seasons, the fire is less and less imperative to keeping warm in her little abode.

Her herb stocks, she notices, are beginning to run low. The spring will be very welcome in coming, indeed.

“I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting,” Rose says, as Pearl delicately seats herself in her usual spot. 

Pearl glances to her side, where the other chair stands, empty. She has the most subtle way, Rose thinks, of begging for company. As she obligingly seats herself, Pearl says, “You had no idea I was coming.”

“But it had been a while since last you were here. I probably ought to have expected...”

With an elegant, over-gentle hand, Pearl reaches across the corner table and brushes her fingertips against Rose’s knuckles. “If you’ll pardon my saying, you’ve chided me enough for being over-apologetic... that is, I feel quite adept recognizing it when it happens. You had no reason to expect me,” she cracks a smile, “and as becoming as hospitality is on you...”

Rose dips her head, laughs, and turns her hand palm-up, until she can fumblingly tangle her fingers with Pearls. “How have you been?” she asks instead.

“Well enough.” Pearl tilts her head, and gives Rose’s hand a squeeze. “You are tired.”

“I am,” Rose agrees, and all but beams. “We’re preparing the for the equinox, and there’s still much to do. We’ve only a few days, now, before the celebrations begin, and it never seems like it will get done in time. But we always manage.”

“Hence, the late night?”

“Precisely.” Rose brightens. “You should come!”

“Oh—I—” The way Pearl’s fingers curl, it is more an embarrassed retraction than it is a squeeze, though given the state of their hands, the motion acts as both. “I don’t even belong to the town.”

“Nor do I.”

“And it’s not as though I’m at leisure to walk about all hours of the day...”

“We have a bonfire starting at sunset and lasting all the night. I certainly will be up all the while, helping tend things, perhaps offering a story or two of the last year, or years long past...” She brushes her thumb over Pearl’s fingers. “You should come,” she says, again. “You are invited by me. Do with that as you choose, but no one would dream of turning you away. They’d be happy to know you. I certainly am.”

Pearl’s shoulders lift, subtly. She never blushes, but she has other motions, other gestures, that imply about the same feeling. “Perhaps,” she offers at length.

Rose’s smile grows. “Tease.”

“She says, teasing me with the very accusation.”

“They say that it takes one to know one.”

Pearl’s mouth presses into a line, fighting a smile. Very surely, Rose knows, had she the blood for it—oh—she would be near beet-red, by now. 

Lifting Pearl’s fingers up to her mouth, she kisses her knuckles, and Pearl smothers a giggle behind tight, happy lips. 

\--

The celebration goes on three whole days, with the middle day being the one of equal time in night and day. 

The first day, when there is but a minute more dark than light, the children are let out to race. The last of the decorations go up, with over-abundant cherry, apple, and plum blossoms culled and woven into fragile garlands. They dye the paper for their paper lanterns,and coat them in wax to keep them safe from the candles inside, and they light them when the sun goes down.

Pearl does not come, and though happy, Rose feels strongly her absence.

The second day, with the first new spring vegetables, and with the lemons kept under blankets through the frost, the townspeople make their feast and their drink, and they begin the day of storytelling. Any story, new or old, passes the lips of young and elder, and there is nary a corner of the place that is not alive with chatter.

At the sunset, they light the bonfire, and Rose herself has a hand in coaxing the flame from kindling to a blaze. 

The bards begin their tales, and what stories are not sung are played. It is then, as the dances begin to shimmer between dark and firelight, that Rose notices a pale, slim figure standing at the outskirts of it all.

She pauses, and beams. Breaking from the circle of dance, she runs on callused feet until the fire is but a gentle memory of light upon her back.

“You came!”

“Well, you did make it quite clear that I was not to see you for three nights, unless I did. That is,” Pearl says, a note of caution creeping into her voice, “of course, if I am still invited...”

She does not quite finish the sentence, before Rose reaches for her hands. Pearl lets them be taken, and Rose draws her forward, into the light of the fire, into the crowds and the warmth and the sound of laughter beneath music.

Introductions can come later. For now, a few of the townspeople wave their greeting, and Pearl waves tentatively back—one-handed, seeing as that her other hand is still quite taken in Rose’s. As it is, Rose has no intention of stopping until she can feel the crisper edge of the flame’s heat. At this size, one need stand a good three or four arm’s lengths away from the fire, and a bit more even than that, to dance without growing much too warm. 

Rose reaches for Pearl’s other hand again as her shoulders begin to sway, to the tempo of every-other drumbeat. Pearl’s eyes go a little wide. They are the palest blue that Rose has ever seen, and in the firelight, they look beautiful, strange, as though one were to hold up a torch to the moon. Smile growing sheepish, Rose continues to sway, letting the motion go down to her hips, straining at her still-grounded feet.

Then, Pearl sets her shoulders. Without need to, she exhales—and to Rose’s delight, she smiles, and begins to sway in kind.

Between the moon, the fire, and Pearl’s luminescent eyes, Rose feels absolutely bathed in light. She begins to laugh. Her feet lift, and touch in time to the music. Pearl makes a small sound and laughs, but quickly catches on. Even knowing herself to be light on her feet, and graceful, Rose cannot help but delight in the way Pearl moves, precise, and delicate, and nearly weightless in it all.

There comes a point in a swell of music when they two begin to spin, and Pearl tips her head back, eyes trustingly closed, and laughs—and Rose is helpless but to join her.

The introductions can come later. For a minute, two, twenty, and hour—for the time being, on this the eve of day and night’s equal sharing, they celebrate, until Rose begins to forget what it is like to move without Pearl’s hand clasped in hers.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally posted on Tumblr, and can be found [here](http://fatalcookies.tumblr.com/post/140946740778/vernal-equinox).


End file.
